Bloodsong

CHAPTER FOUR: CATALYST

Every minute that Jack didn't return brought Valeriana closer to cracking.

Perhaps she'd gone overboard in blocking all chains of thought liable to make her panic. It had only made her dissociate from her circumstances, to the point where she felt as substantial as dreams built from sea foam.

Whatever parts of her mind hadn't turned into inscrutable badlands were riddled with intrusive pictures. Dark sand. The silvery gleam of starlight on water. Hands dripping scarlet. A body, no head, blood on her tongue and on her dress and everywhere other than in the song she'd silenced.

Valeriana put her back to the garden wall and slouched in the shadows under the palm trees, darting nervous glances at the passersby, praying for time to lapse faster. She only noticed the figure making its way towards her when they got close enough to grab her.

Which, as fortune would have it, was exactly what they did.

"

Nnn

?" she said, more in surprise than alarm. The black, heavy dress — how was the woman not all shriveled up from sweating, wearing something like that? — the ramrod straight posture and the copper red hair, lacquered into submission and confined to a tidy bun, were all familiar, if not comforting. "Oh, Lady M—"

"Close your mouth and walk." Jack's aunt, as fearsome bathed in orange light and dappled shadows as she'd been while moonlighting as the wraith in the ballroom's corner, seized her by the arm and marched her down the path at breakneck speed, neglecting to release her until they stood in front of a secondary building detached from the tower.

With an air of cultivated disinterest that was Tess-levels of flawless, the woman pushed Valeriana against a column of a nearby arcade and stalked towards the entrance ahead.

Grasping that she wasn't supposed to follow, and that moving or making a sound louder than an exhale would have dire consequences, Valeriana put her back against the cool rhyolite and breathed in.

Well.

Well.

This was . . . still the better outcome, although a cowardly part of her whined that she might have felt more at ease in fearing arrest. It remained unclear how much Lady Marabeth knew, how open Jack had been about the night's events — where in darkness was Jack, at that? Why hadn't he—

A rumbling

vrrrwam

sounded behind her. The source, a vehicle puttering down the driveway. Valeriana shuffled to the side and poked her head around the column, attempting to see past the blinding yellow light.

An automobile. Lady Marabeth owned one of those, although this didn't appear to be the same one she had in Lenosh. The one Jack had once borrowed without permission. The one Valeriana had let him talk her into sitting in while he took it for a spin. Since he hadn't found it worthwhile to inform her that he'd never learned to drive it, the entire business ranked among the most singularly terrifying experiences of her life.

The automobile, of indiscernible color under the cover of night, lurched to a halt some distance away, pointing towards the sloping road. The lights flickered on and off. Valeriana didn't see how it was possible for a mechanical contraption to give off an impression of impatience, but this one did in spades.

She slunk around the back and stopped, praying that someone would open the door, as it wasn't apparent how the locks worked. No such luck. She took ages with them, as she didn't want to pull and risk pulling too hard; damaging Lady Marabeth's property was unlikely to endear her to the woman.

Lady Marabeth barked an instruction at the person behind the wheel. Or what Valeriana gathered to be a person, given that she hadn't gotten a good look at them. The crossness radiating from her as Valeriana sheepishly settled inside was scorching.

Silence fell between them as they got moving, leaving Valeriana feeling an uneasy mixture of rude, relieved and restless.She hadn't said her thanks yet. Still, since she had an inkling that opening her mouth without Lady Marabeth prompting her would do the opposite of improving the general mood, she kept quiet.

They made it past the secondary gate, leaving the Glass Tower behind. The ride turned out less frightening than Valeriana had steeled herself for. Whoever drove them actually knew how to, as there was a lack of blurry scenery spinning round and round, or of her throat being flayed raw by screaming as she held on for dear life.

Even so, they were going fast, though she only gained a real notion of

how

fast when a tapestry of light flares emerged in the distance.

"That can't be the city, can it?" she whispered. It was the first sound to be birthed during the journey other than her sharp inhalings whenever she remembered she needed oxygen, the brisk yet precise notes of the only blood song within hearing and the noises typical to mechanical whatsits in motion. "It was an hour long trip by carriage, and it's only been . . ."

"

Of course

it's the city," Her assessment of Lady Marabeth as someone who disliked idle chitchat turned out correct. The contempt was so strong she could taste it. "You've never ridden in a car before, have you?

Valeriana nodded a lie, not wanting to tattle on Jack on the slim chance that his escapade from years ago had gone undiscovered. Although considering that the vehicle had been missing two tires by the end, she very much doubted it.

"My father doesn't trust them. Says that they are a fad brought here by colonists gone native on their worlds of residence, who have lost all sight of what it means to be Tsikalayan."

"How old is that man again?"

"Five hundred and forty."

"He'll waste his youth with that attitude. What did you do with the body?"

It was jarring to be forced to think back to . . .

that

. The dismal time she'd had searching for a stretch of sea where the current was strong enough to wash away the body. Then, scanning the beach for spots where the sand needed to be overturned to hide the blood. Touching Ralen one last time and—

"I threw it —

him

— in the sea."

Lady Marabeth's face was so slow to move that it put Valeriana in mind of a glacier. Her lips, perhaps her sole feature capable of expressing emotion, twisted in disapproval.

"In this area? He'll rot up to his eyeballs before there's a wave strong enough to wash him onto the high seas. I wouldn't like to attend that burning ceremony. The amount of incense required to cover up the stench . . ." Valeriana, who hadn't given that any thought, looked at the woman in appalled amazement. Lady Marabeth returned the stare with eyes that were just like Jack's, except hard. Contemplative. "How did killing him make you feel?"

"Uhm."

"Don't be shy. I won't tell.

They

don't matter." Lady Marabeth smiled, not nicely, not in a remotely reassuring way, and made a dismissive gesture at the unseen driver. "

Well?"

Refusing to answer was seemingly not an option. Valeriana examined the rust stuck under her nails and bit her lip.

The body. Everything it had taken to turn a man with a whole life ahead of him into a bygone. Bones breaking and skin and flesh rending, so much of his blood in her mouth she'd choked on it, and nevertheless persisted until the fine thread that bound head to neck snapped.

How had it made her feel?

Heinous

would be the decent thing to say.

Powerful

was more truthful.

"It wasn't right," she whispered, afraid to raise her voice. That would make her sound too comfortable with what she'd done. She wasn't that far gone. Probably. "Still, after everything, I can't bring myself to regret it."

"Gods above, why would you? You could for sure have made less of a mess putting him down, and you might also have planned it better, but since my nephew told me it was all very spur of the moment, I'd call it — not

well done

, no, yet decent for what you had to work with. Don't regret.

Be proud

."

Valeriana shrugged and focused her gaze on the serrated city line, pretending that the validation didn't feel treacherously warm.

"We'll stop by my rooms so you can change into something travel appropriate and I can arrange for my belongings to be sent to the gate. Ki-Laar Seven will take you in around the back so you'll go unnoticed." Lady Marabeth gifted her another pointed, unsettling smile.The driver — Ki-Laar Seven, one surmised — turned its head, causing Valeriana to swallow a squeak.

The creature looked like it had been purposefully designed to chill every spine in the vicinity. Bone white skin stretched paper thin over bony cheekbones. Eyes all black and shaped like coins shone dully back at her. A straight purple line stood in lieu of lips. It wasn't the first time Valeriana had encountered one of them; she'd spotted some sneaking about during visits to Jack's home. She'd never seen them up close, however, and therefore had never properly appreciated how frightening they were.

"Thank you," she said, letting her voice tremble only a little. "Will Jack — will he join us there?"

"No. I've instructed him to stay at the ball and let everyone know that he infuriated me so much that I've decided to return to Earth, so as to not endure the sight of him a day longer. Not too far fetched, considering the extremely public exchange we had earlier tonight. If he doesn't botch it, I'll be afforded a degree of plausible deniability on this matter. I will add that he was rather against leaving you alone in my care, for whatever reason. Suffice to say, I wasn't having with that."

"I apologize for—"

"If you are about to start with that nonsense, you may as well be silent."

They didn't talk again for the rest of the journey.

♖

As a child and in adulthood, Valeriana's favorite indoor part of the Lazur estate had been the altar room.

It was grand. The walls there were palimpsests, pregnant with spidery ink lines. Transcripts of psalms figured in abundance, as was the expectation for a place of worship, but the widest wall featured, instead of holy script, a map.

Barashi stood at its heart, as it ought to. Around it, drawn in smaller scale, the Bound Worlds, bright circles taken up by place names and tiny multicolored flags. Enveloping them all, the gates, represented as curlicued golden whorls.

Valeriana couldn't say how often she'd hovered her fingers over it, never daring to touch for fear of rubbing the paint off. How many times she'd repeated a wistful 'someday' in the privacy of her mind while her tongue wrapped around the unfamiliar names. Samkrim, where they said the ocean was salty enough to be walkable, where a red sun set in a green sky. Caedros and Hemetea, twins and opposites; one frozen down to its deadened core, the other sporting a surface prone to changing its mind about wanting to be solid. Kaldiciperia, with its gleaming cities of quartz and fool's gold.

Other nations, worlds distant.

"

Sorted.

" Valeriana jumped, not having heard Lady Marabeth approach. Then again, she could just somewhat hear herself think. The world gate terminal was crowded worse than Lenosh's main square on market day, the background noise echoing deafeningly in the cavernous space. Lady Marabeth, to whom the hubbub would be old hat, slapped a piece of paper in her hand. "Your travel documentation. From now until you are through the Earthen checkpoint, you'll be Vee sa Whatnot. Rutha? Check, I think that was it. Can you fake a Ruthan accent?"

"I, uhm . . ."

"

No,

then. In that case, nod and smile and pretend to be mute if anyone bids you to speak. Keep your eyes down, too. You are gaping at everything like a simpleton. Usually I wouldn't take the walkway, but since it makes it easier to pretend we have nothing to do with each other, we'll slog through it. Follow me until we're at the checkpoints. After, you'll walk in front of me, no more and no less than ten feet away, so we don't appear to be together and I don't risk losing you among the unwashed riffraff. Questions?"

"I—"

"Excellent. Come along and

don't follow me too closely

."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to . . ." Valeriana trailed off when the woman's arched eyebrow reminded her that she'd been commanded to silence, starting seemingly immediately.

Cheeks flaming and stomach twisting, Valeriana followed, unsure how Lady Marabeth knew the right direction with so many bodies flowing past every which way.

They parted ways at the checkpoints, which Valeriana discovered were a nightmare unto themselves. Dozens of small cubicles spread along an arched wall, none of them numbered or displaying information, and if there was a rhyme or reason to whose turn it was to approach them, she couldn't discern it.

Her relief, when a gate officer two stations to her left signaled her over, was unbounded.

"Tsikalayan?" The man wore an overtired expression and only wasted a fraction of a second on her papers. Remembering Lady Marabeth's instructions, Valeriana nodded. The officer's eye twitched, but it might just be the weight of the bags set under them, since his tone remained lifeless, bored, droning. "Proof, if you please."

"

Uh

." Valeriana tried not to visibly panic. Was this standard procedure? She'd never been asked to provide evidence that she belonged to her kind, couldn't fathom why it might be needed when she was standing right there, as . .

. oh

. The noise, of course. He couldn't hear her blood song. That, thankfully, made sense.

She shifted her teeth and flashed them. The officer stamped her papers without a pause and waved her through. She couldn't help but wonder how Jack's older brother handled these things. Perhaps he had faked documentation also, and unlike her, Berthold could manifest tentacles. Or perhaps it didn't matter that he was mixed as long as he had Tsikalayan in him. She wasn't certain what the rules were for those situations.

Lady Marabeth, who had probably glared her way past the checkpoint in two seconds flat, stood waiting without making it look like waiting. Valeriana endeavored to appear suitably mortified as she moved into her orbit and then past her, wrestling with the compulsion to check if the woman followed.

It was less confusing on the other side, with everyone moving in the same direction. There was even a triage of sorts happening further ahead, with people getting sorted into formal, organized lines.

Valeriana was once again asked to provide evidence of species and hustled behind a family of five. The children, suicidally determined to get underfoot, kept forcing her to grind to a halt so as to not stumble over them. Behind her, a woman carrying salamanders in a shallow basin cooed at them in what sounded like Drakoe dialect. She would splash water against her back every time they advanced a step, but Valeriana couldn't summon the courage to confront her.

The queue was rumpled and unruly, but at least it moved swiftly. When Valeriana turned to look, so many people had been added to it and so many heads stood in the way that she could no longer see where the line ended. Where it started was, at least, clearly marked by a golden sign hanging from the rafters, where Earth/Gate 3 was written and underlined in Barashnik and Kaldian.

Valeriana's daydreaming of otherworldly sights hadn't often featured Earth. Jack had been born there, and from the way he spoke of it, Valeriana gathered that he didn't much like it and wouldn't bother going back if his relatives on his mother's side didn't take exception to him not visiting. He'd called it cold and mind numbingly boring and full of humans, a cultural desert with too many factories stinking up the place, where the food was so vile that he wouldn't feed it to a dog — the only entities contained on Earth that Valeriana recalled him saying something

nice

about.

It was an opinion best taken with a sack of salt, since Jack was also prone to complaining about Lenosh in ways she found neither fair nor warranted, but it had somewhat dampened her curiosity about the world.

It wouldn't have to be Earth forever, though, even if it turned out to be exactly as unpleasant a place as Jack said. She could go elsewhere, later on. She might go to West Soralia and — the thought came with a startling amount of viciousness — have a stellar, amazing time there,

alone.

Well, not entirely. Jack could come if he wanted to. They'd have an amazing time

together

.

The queue had progressed enough for her to make out the archway it headed towards. Valeriana couldn't help but be underwhelmed. It was unimpressive, and old and gloomy looking besides.

Gate officers stood on either side of it, handing out crystals similar to the ones in the Glass Tower gardens, only blue. Not all who passed by were handed one, and there was a spot of tension when a man demanded one and tried to start an argument upon seeing himself denied. Valeriana gingerly stepped back.

Lady Marabeth had called this the walkway path; it was bound to be a different experience than what Jack had described from his own ventures off world. According to him, you got seated in a container resembling a wheelless carriage, which would glide forward at a glacial pace until you couldn't see anything but black outside. You'd then spend ten minutes snacking on the complimentary nuts and candy until the lights went on again, exit, and go through the same process of checking in, but in reverse. He'd never mentioned queues crawling on like restless serpents or fights breaking out over shiny rocks.

She was startled twice over when it dawned on her that it was her turn. First, because an egg sized azure polyhedron was thrust at her while she tripped forward. Second, because of the late realization that these were her last moments on Barashi for who knew how long.

Perhaps forever.

Valeriana scried the shadows hemmed in by the archway, closing her fingers around the blue crystal and squeezing it like a talisman, losing herself in staring and earning dirty looks and unfriendly mutters from those standing behind her. Once she realized she was holding up the line, she blushed to the roots of her hair and skipped forward, too embarrassed to stop and worry about what waited across the threshold.

Darkness was what she found.

Darkness, never ending,

everlasting.

Gone were the insipid clay tiles of the terminal. She stood in a space her eyes balked at regarding, her chest constricting and her hands sweating and something sour climbing up her throat, and she was —

Ralen

hadn't made her as terrified as she felt standing here. It was not unlike her nightmares of drowning; cold, pure blackness cloven in twain by anonymous screams that might very well be coming from her own mouth.

A hand emerged from the dark as though birthed by it, pushing her aside. Valeriana stumbled back, only just managing to hold on to the crystal. Words, garbled, indistinct and foreign, were spoken and fell on deaf ears; she couldn't bring herself to make sense of them. The hand and the person attached to it had moved on, but something . . . something at her back, something under her feet, something that only the thinnest, flimsiest barrier prevented her from careening into, something . . .

something

was still reaching for her.

"Get a move on, you!"

"Sacrima sacrima gaha sai?"

"Fucking hit that damned brat if he won't shut up on his own!"

"Can I get someone with a light over here?"

"Mama mama MAMA!"

"Awful lot of first time crossers, looks like . . ."

"Sika, mushy, WHERE ARE YOU?!"

Bony fingers closed around Valeriana's wrist, nearly stopping her heart.

"There you are!"

She swallowed, glad she'd been too stunned to scream.